Supreme Court Again Infuriates Liberals

Destroys justification for college affirmative action.

Thumbnail credit: © Ziyu Julian Zhu/Xinhua via ZUMA Press

This video is available on Rumble, BitChute, and Odysee.

The Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action and the reactions to it are the latest proof — as if any were needed — that politics in multiracial America are fractured beyond repair.

The best thing the decision did was demolish the idea that “diversity” on campus is so important that it justifies racial discrimination. As for the reactions, hysterical liberals — that is to say, Democrats and most of the media — genuinely seem to believe that the decision is a great victory for — guess what? — white supremacy.

First, let’s look at the racial discrimination in Harvard’s admissions policies, which was a big part of the case. Litigation often compels parties to cough up information they don’t want anyone to see.

Columnist and podcaster John Derbyshire has rightly called attention to this expert report. The author, Peter Arcidiacono, is an economics professor at Duke, and used admissions data Harvard was forced to turn over. This table calculates what a Harvard class would have looked like if admissions had been based strictly on grades and test scores, or what Harvard called its “academic index.” If Harvard had randomly accepted whites, black, Hispanics and Asians from the “top decile,” or top 10 percent on the academic index, shown on the bottom line, the admitted class would have been 36.54 percent white, 0.76 percent black, 2.69 percent Hispanic, and 51.52 percent Asian. That would mean completely disregarded race. As you work up from the bottom line, you can see class composition if Harvard had ignored race but selected from the top 20 or 30 percent, etc.. What was the actual racial mix of admitted students?

That’s the blue line. Whites were 37.61 percent of the class — very close to the 36.54 percent that would have got in on merit. Blacks were 15.81 percent, or 22-1/2 times the number that would have been admitted on merit. Hispanics were 14.9 percent, or 5-1/2 times, and Asians were 24.86, or just under half the number that would have been admitted on pure academic index. Asians clearly paid the price so Harvard could let in so many blacks and Hispanics.

Let us hear no more guff about “affirmative action” being a benevolent exercise in “equal opportunity” that hurts no one. Harvard was rigorously discriminating against Asians so as to admit favored minorities.

This was what Chief Justice John Roberts was talking about when he wrote that “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” and that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment forbids discrimination.

Mr. Roberts completely repudiated the “diversity” justification for discrimination. The theory had always been that having blacks and Hispanics on campus is a “compelling interest” because their mere presence vastly improves a college education for everyone. The history of that silly argument, which dates back to the famous 1978 Bakke decision — which rejected preferences as compensation for past racial harm, by the way — is laid out in this Reason article, “Say Farewell To The ‘Diversity Benefits’ Rationale For Affirmative Action.”

Justice Roberts wrote that the benefits of diversity are pure assertions, entirely unproven, impossible to quantify, and can’t be evaluated by judges. In other words, baloney. For 45 years, judges have blindly accepted the hot-air claims universities made for diversity, and the Roberts court refuses to go along.

Oddly, no one is asking the obvious question: If the benefits of campus diversity are baloney, what about diversity elsewhere? I have been arguing for 30 years that racial diversity is a terrible source of conflict and tension.

Is the court edging my way?

In their dissents, in which they tried to defend race preferences, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Jackson didn’t even try to rehabilitate “diversity,” it’s so phony.

Instead, they roared about the horrors of past discrimination. As this article notes, “the dissenters adopted the en vogue theory that our society is plagued by structural racism and the Fourteenth Amendment must be interpreted to remedy that oppression.”

They have swallowed Critical Race Theory, and are hanging their hats on a justification of discrimination — compensation for past harm — that the court rejected 45 years ago in Bakke. This is full-blown, Kamala-Harris style “equity,” which insists that every black-white difference must be blamed on awful white people, and must be set right by special treatment.

Justice Jackson’s dissent was especially shrill.

She lovingly trotting out slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, and statistics on race differences in outcome that she blamed on white people. Rich Lowry in National Review correctly wrote that “Her handiwork hardly qualifies as a legal opinion. It reads like a guest essay by ‘anti-racist’ guru Ibram X. Kendi.”

That is no doubt why Kamala Harris called it “one of the most brilliant dissents that any justice of the United States Supreme Court has ever written.”

I’m sure the vice president has read every dissent, since the first one was written in 1790.

In her enthusiasm, Justice Jackson wrote that affirmative action literally “saves lives:” “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”

I knew that was wrong as soon as I read it, and was about to dig through Ms. Jackson’s footnotes but the Wall Street Journal saved me the trouble. “Justice Jackson’s Incredible Statistic” explains why her claim is not only untrue but absurd. *** For the most part, big media has knelt at her feet, as in “Ketanji Brown Jackson Exposed the Supreme Court’s ‘Colorblind’ Lie.” This is one of many articles that breathlessly repeated the claim about dying black babies. ***

The sky, we are told, will surely fall. “The Supreme Court Just Bulldozed Affirmative Action,” says Slate, adding that “the decision is a massive blow to racial justice, one with noxious consequences throughout society that we will feel for the rest of our lives.”

MSNBC contributor Dean Obeidallah tweeted: “Next up the GOP’s Supreme “Court” will strike down the Civil Rights Act to allow Jim Crow segregation to start again.”

Note the scare quotes around “court.”

Someone named Aziz Huq, who teaches at University of Chicago Law School, wrote that “Ending Affirmative Action May Be Just the Beginning,” predicting that “race-blindness by the Supreme Court will make it easier for other people to discriminate.”

Treating people — especially Asians — equally is white supremacy.

When they weren’t blasting the Court, liberals flayed Asians for breaking ranks with the anti-white coalition.

Fox collected examples in “Media, liberals attack Asian Americans as pawns.”

Soledad O’Brien told an Asian who supported the ruling, “Congrats on screwing over other people of color.”

Jemele Hill of the Atlantic wrote to the same Asian: “Can’t wait until [your daughter] reads that you gladly carried the water for White supremacy.”

NPR quoted Asians in “Affirmative action divided Asian Americans and other people of color.”

Jeff Chang said “Asians serve as this sort of mask for white privilege. A mask that white privilege can wear in order to hide itself.” Sally Chen said the Supreme Court’s decision says: “Hey, Asian Americans, you too can see Black and brown people demanding equity and inclusion as a threat to you. Cast your fate with white opponents of integration.”

Needless to say, “Biden Says Supreme Court Can’t Have ‘Last Word’ on Affirmative Action.”

The President says the Court is trying to change what America stands for: “giving everyone a fair shot.” Blacks and Hispanics get a “fair shot” only when everyone else doesn’t.

Mr. Biden has already commissioned a study on “promising admissions practices to build inclusive, diverse student bodies.”

That is, how to subvert the ruling.

The Roberts decision has two kinks. First, in application essays, students can write about the importance of their racial identities and how they fought racism, but this must be something unique to each applicant, and must not be a way to smuggle affirmative action in through the back door. I don’t think writing about race will work for white applicants.

Also, Mr. Roberts exempted military academies from his ruling. They can go on blatantly discriminating because national security requires a diverse officer corps. How does this square with his insistence that diversity is baloney, and that the 14th Amendment forbids racial discrimination?

So, what happens now? I predict a brief dip in black and Hispanic admissions, before fancy schools go back to their old ways. Every favored-race applicant will turn out to have written a brilliant essay about his life-long fight against white supremacy. More schools will dump standardized testing, so there will no longer be an objective way to measure discrimination. Admissions offices will put nothing on paper and destroy all records of admission decisions. And, of course, the truth about race differences in IQ will be censored as ruthlessly as ever.

The libido for so-called “equity” is too strong to be thwarted by a mere court decision. One thing is certain. We won’t get Little Rock, 1957.

The 101st Airborne will never fix bayonets and force aside deans of diversity so that blatant victims of discrimination can attend Harvard or UC Berkeley.